How to Choose a Medical Assistant School near Roaring Spring Pennsylvania
Now that you have made a decision to join the rewarding profession of health care and enroll in a medical assistant school near Roaring Spring PA, it’s time to select a school that will provide the proper training. But just how do you approach evaluating and comparing schools so that you ultimately pick the best one? Many future students start by evaluating the medical assistant schools that are nearest to their homes and then gravitate toward those that have the lowest tuition. While cost and location are very important, such things as accreditation, internship programs and job assistance are important factors also. You might choose to take a look at some online medical assistant programs as an option as well (more on that later). The bottom line is that before you select a college you must carry out your due diligence and compare all relevant qualifications of the colleges you are examining. And to help you with that task, we have furnished several questions that you need to ask each of the schools on your “maybe” list. But before we start that review, let’s talk a little bit about the function of a medical assistant and the kind of credentials and training that are offered.
The Function of a Medical Assistant
The job of a medical assistant can be varied as well as challenging. Basically their role is to make sure that the Roaring Spring PA clinics, hospitals and other medical care facilities where they work run efficiently. Depending on the size or type of facility, they may be more of a clinical assistant, an administrative assistant, or in smaller facilities both. They are responsible for providing direct support to the physicians, nurses and other health professionals but may also be found working in an office or at the front desk. Some of the many functions of a medical assistant include:
- Filling out insurance forms and submitting claims
- Setting and confirming appointments
- Weighing and taking patients vital signs
- Taking blood and other tissue and fluid samples
- Preparing instruments and rooms for doctors
- Supplying general support during exams and procedures
Even though medical assistants can perform almost any activity they are qualified to under Pennsylvania law, some choose to specialize in a specific area and attain certification. Two of the choices available are for the Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA) and the Certified Medical Administrative Assistant (CMAA) made available by the National Healthcareer Association (NHA).
Medical Assistant Education
Unlike many other medical professionals, medical assistants are not required to become certified, licensed, or to have a college degree. However, many Roaring Spring PA health care employers prefer to hire graduates of an accredited medical assistant training school (we’ll cover accreditation later ) that have earned certification. There are generally 2 options offered for a formal education. The first and shortest route to becoming a medical assistant is to acquire a certificate or diploma. These programs typically take about 1 year to finish, a few as little as six to nine months. They are created to teach the basics of medical assisting and ready graduates for entry level positions. The second option is to attain an Associate Degree, which are normally two year programs offered at community and junior colleges in addition to technical and vocational schools. They are more expansive in nature than the diploma or certificate programs, and include general education courses in addition to the medical assistant courses. They usually have a clinical element requiring an internship with a local healthcare practice. Associate Degrees are often a pre-requisite for and credits can be applied to a 4 year Bachelor’s Degree in Medical Assistant Studies or a similar field.
Online Medical Assistant Programs
There are a number of accredited medical assistant programs offered online too. They are a good alternative for students who might not have the time to go to classes on campus but could work them in if accessible at home. This is an especially good option for students who continue to work full time while attaining their certificate or degree. As an extra benefit, many online programs have cheaper tuitions than the more conventional on-campus options. Supplemental costs such as for commuting, textbooks and school supplies may be lessened also. Just bear in mind that any requirements for practical training or internships must still be met, but they can usually be performed in Roaring Spring PA area medical facilities. If you can earn a degree without the formal structure of participating in supervised classes on campus, then this mode of receiving your education might be the ideal choice for you. With the online lessons and the practical training, everything needed to attain proficiency to perform as a medical assistant is furnished.
Certification Options for Medical Assistants
As stated previously, becoming certified is not a legal requirement, but is an excellent idea for graduates who want to advance their careers. Not only will it help in obtaining a job after graduation, but it might also enhance preliminary salary negotiations. Some possible Roaring Spring PA medical employers just will not hire a medical assistant that has not attained accredited formal training or certification. One of the most popular and perhaps the most highly regarded certification is the Certified Medical Assistant (CMA) provided by the American Association of Medical Assistants (AAMA). In order to apply for the CMA exam, a candidate must be a graduate or will graduate within thirty days from an accredited medical assistant program. Additional certifications are offered also, such as the CMAA and the CCMA that we previously mentioned which are provided by the NHA.
What to Ask Medical Assistant Programs
Before you can start examining your medical assistant school options, you must decide which kind of credential you would like to attain, and if you would prefer attending classes on-campus or online at home. Once those decisions have been made, you can begin the procedure of comparing medical assistant schools. As we covered at the beginning of this article, some students limit their searches to the colleges that are closest to Roaring Spring PA with the cheapest tuition. Although cost and location are significant qualifications, they are by no means the only ones. There are a number of additional factors that you must explore when researching programs. To assist you with that task, below are some questions that you should ask about all of the schools you are considering before making your ultimate selection.
Is the Medical Assistant College Accredited? There are several good reasons to ensure that the college you enroll in is accredited. To begin with, accreditation helps guarantee that the education you receive will be both comprehensive and of the highest quality. Second, if you plan on becoming certified, you must complete an accredited program. Two of the accepted organizations for accreditation are the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) and the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES). If your program is not accredited by one of these agencies, you will not be allowed to take the CMA exam. Also, if you intend on applying for a student loan or financial assistance, they are often not offered for non-accredited programs. And last, as previously mentioned, a number of potential Roaring Spring PA employers will not hire a medical assistant who has not graduated from an accredited school.
What is the School’s Passage Percentage? Most of the accredited medical assistant colleges create their programs to ready students to pass one or more certification exams. To start with, you need to find out which of the certifications the colleges you are reviewing are preparing their students for. If you are interested in taking the CMA for example, then obviously you will need to select a program focused on that certification. Second, find out what the program’s passage rate is for the certification and compare it to the national average. This is just one of the ways to help assess the quality of a school’s program. Of course schools with lower rates are ones that you will want to eliminate.
Which Credentials are Offered? As we covered earlier, there are basically two paths to obtaining medical assistant training. You can choose a certificate or diploma program and receive entry level training in the fastest amount of time, from as little as 6 months, although the average is about one year. Or you can choose to obtain an Associate Degree and get a more comprehensive education that will require about two years to accomplish in a community college or vocational school. Whichever program you elect to enroll in, verify that the colleges you are looking at offer the kind of program you have an interest in.
Are Internships Offered? Numerous medical assistant colleges offer internship programs with Roaring Spring PA area medical providers. They are an excellent means to receive hands-on clinical experience and training. They may also help students establish relationships within the Roaring Spring health care community. And as an added benefit, they are an asset on resumes and for job interviews as well.
Is Job Placement Support Offered? Getting that initial job may be a difficult task for graduating medical assistant students unless they obtain some assistance from a job placement program. Confirm that the colleges you are evaluating provide job placement assistance in the Roaring Spring PA area and find out what their placement rate is. If a school has a high job placement rate for its students, it indicates that it has an excellent reputation within the health care community. It also signifies that it has a broad network of employers to help place students in jobs.
How Large are the Classrooms? Class size might be an indication of how much individual instruction you will get during your training. Smaller classes and classes with a higher teacher to student ratio are more likely to furnish increased access to teachers and face to face interaction. If possible, try to monitor a few classes before selecting a school to experience what the teaching atmosphere is like and just how much attention the students get.
Is Class Scheduling Practical? If you anticipate attending a medical assistant program while you continue working full time, it’s imperative that the school you enroll in provides classes that accommodate your schedule. If you have to attend classes at night or on weekends near Roaring Spring PA, verify that those times are available. You might be able to fit your classes in more easily with an online program, but you will also need to schedule any internships or clinical training that might be required. Also, find out what the protocol is for making up classes that you might have to miss because of work, illness or family emergencies.
Enrolling in a Medical Assistant Program near Roaring Spring Pennsylvania?
If you are considering attending a medical assistant school in the Roaring Spring PA area, following is some background information that may be both interesting and useful regarding your future campus location.
Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania
Roaring Spring was established around the Big Spring in Morrison's Cove, a clean and dependable water source vital to the operation of a paper mill. Prior to 1866, when the first paper mill was built, Roaring Spring had been a grist mill hamlet with a country store at the intersection of two rural roads that lead to the mill near the spring. A grist mill, powered by the spring water, had operated at that location since at least the 1760s. After 1867, as the paper mill expanded, surrounding tracts of land were acquired to accommodate housing development for new workers. The formalization of a town plan, however, never occurred. As a result, the seemingly random street pattern of the historic district is the product of hilly topography, a small network of pre-existing country roads that converged near the Big Spring, and the property lines of adjacent tracts that were acquired through the years for community expansion. The arterial streets of the district are now East Main, West Main, Spang and Bloomfield, each of which leads out of the borough to surrounding townships. Two of these streets — Spang and East Main — meet with Church Street at the district's main intersection called "Five Points." The boundaries of the district essentially include those portions of Roaring Spring Borough which had been laid out for development by the early 1920s. This area encompasses 233 acres (0.94 km2) or 55 percent of the borough's area of 421 acres (1.70 km2). Since the district's period of significance extends to 1944, most of those buildings erected after the 1920s were built as infill within the areas already subdivided by the 1920s. In the early 1960s, the Borough began to annex sections of adjacent Taylor Township, especially to the east around the then new Rt. 36 Bypass.
Daniel Mathias (D. M.) Bare laid out Roaring Spring's first 50 building lots in 1865 after he and two partners decided to locate the region's first paper mill near the spring.[3] These lots were located within and around the so-called village "triangle" defined by West Main, Spang, and East Main Streets. By 1873, the borough contained about 170 lots and 50 buildings, which included the paper and grist mills, three churches, a company store, a schoolhouse, and one hotel. The population stood at about 100. The triangle remained the industrial, commercial and retailing core of the town until 1957 when the bypass of Main Street, PA Rt. 36, was built to the east of town through Taylor Township. As is true of many American small towns, many village merchants along with new businesses have since relocated to the new highway. The village core retains only a few shops and professional offices, but still holds the Roaring Spring Blank Book Company and Roaring Spring Water Bottling Company, all of the historic church buildings, the public library(formerly the Eldon Inn), the borough building, the post office(earlier moved from farther up East Main St.). The elementary school (former junior-senior high school)was demolished in 2010.
The Roaring Spring Historic District is located within the Borough of Roaring Spring, a paper-mill town of about 2,600 established in the late 1860s in southern Blair County, south-central Pennsylvania.[1] Roaring Spring is situated within the northwest quadrant of a long bowl-like valley known as Morrisons Cove, one of dozens of long but broad valleys in Pennsylvania's Ridge and Valley region. The town developed just southeast of a natural pass into the valley called McKee's Gap where an important iron smelting business (Martha Furnace) operated through the mid 19th century. The site of Roaring Spring is moderately hilly, drained by Cabbage and Halter Creeks. The most prominent natural feature is the Big Spring, or Roaring Spring, a large natural limestone spring so-called because of the great noise its eight-million-gallon-a-day stream once made rushing out of the hillside near the village center.[2] Roaring Spring is overwhelmingly residential (91 percent) in scale, but also includes churches, stops, professional offices, a municipal building, parks, a cemetery, a book factory complex, and a former railroad station. Most houses are two-story, wood-frame single-family buildings situated on lots of 1⁄5 acre (810 m2) to 1⁄7 acre (580 m2). The largest segment of the building stock between 1865 and 1944 was constructed between the 1890s and 1930s. Architecturally, the district contains a variety of late 19th to early 20th century styles and vernacular building types, including Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Bungalow, Foursquare, Gable Fronts, Gable Fronts & Wings, I Houses, and double-pile Georgian types. Ninety (90) percent of the district's 643 properties is rated as contributing. The remaining 10 percent consists of buildings less than 50 years old (constructed after 1944) or older buildings whose architectural integrity has been lost through inappropriate alterations. Overall, most alterations, such as inappropriate replacement of windows, doors and porch posts, are reversible if desired.[4]
Pick the Best Medical Assistant Program Roaring Spring PA
It’s imperative to begin your new career on the right foot by enrolling in a medical assistant school that will provide the right training. Whether you’re objective is to begin a career in health care starting out as a medical assistant or to practice medical assistance as your lifetime career, you need to acquire the appropriate information on available programs prior to making your selection. There are so many schools providing training nowadays that you can make a selection based on your individual circumstances and personal preferences. And as we have discussed in this article, confirm that the program you choose is accredited by a recognized organization, for example the CAAHEP. This is especially important if you plan on taking the CMA certification examination. You came to this site initially because you had an interest in Medical Assistant Course Online. But irrespective of the type of credential that you intend to earn or if you have decided to attend either an online or on-campus school, be sure to ask the questions we have supplied so you can compare programs and make an informed decision. And by choosing the right program you can subsequently begin a gratifying career as a medical assistant in Roaring Spring PA.
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